The flagship European University initiative is expanding and includes, for the first time, universities from Switzerland.
The European university initiative is expanding in the EU and beyond. On 27 July 2022, the European Commission (EC) published the much anticipated results of this year’s call for European Universities. The call had a total budget of €272 million distributed between two funding topics: The first topic provides continued funding for four years for the alliances of the first wave (2019 pilot call); the second topic provides funding for the establishment of new alliances. Each alliance receives up to €14.4 million, depending on the number of members. In comparison, the maximum grant was €5 million during the last funding period.
Under the first programme topic, 16 of the 17 existing alliances from 2019 were funded to continue their work and build on the first achievements and outcomes of the pilot projects. The EU4ART alliance was the only alliance that was not further supported by the EC. Most existing alliances added new members to their consortia, on average, two new members (between zero and four). At the same time, a few universities also left alliances. As announced at the end of 2021, this was the first time that the Commission allowed for higher education institutions (HEI) from Bologna countries that are outside of Erasmus+, for example, Switzerland, to join the alliances as associated partners. While they cannot receive Erasmus+ funding, they can contribute to the different work packages of the alliances by investing their own resources. In the case of Switzerland, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) had made funding available for Swiss HEIs to join the initiative as associated partners. In this latest call, four Swiss higher education institutions were selected to join four alliances: the University of Zurich joined Una Europa, the University of Lausanne joined CIVIS, the University of Geneva joined 4EU+, and the University of Basel joined EPICUR (1CORE). Further HEIs from Switzerland are expected to join European university alliances next year and have submitted declarations of interest for this purpose. More information is available on the website of Movetia, the Swiss national agency for Erasmus+.
Under the second programme topic, 4 new European Universities were funded (see page 4 of the call results document): EU4DUAL, EU GREEN, INGENIUM, and UNIgreen. Two out of the four new alliances focus on sustainability and the environment, which shows that this is a priority area for the Commission. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the size of these new alliances matches the increased size of the existing alliances from 2019 with on average 9 members each. Lastly, EU4DUAL and INGENIUM each have two members that are universities of applied sciences (in contrast, there is only one among the first 16 alliances). This corresponds to the Commission’s objective to include more and diverse HEI in the initiative.
With this 2022 funding round included, there are now a new total of 44 European University alliances involving 340 HEIs. A similar call with a funding topic for expansion and one for new alliances will be announced at the end of this year, focusing on the continuation and expansion of the alliances that were funded in the 2020 pilot call. This will contribute further to the EC’s goal to have 60 alliances by 2024, comprising 500 HEIs. Furthermore, top-up funding from the European Excellence initiative of Horizon Europe is expected in the future.